Re: FW: Front Page

["Steven J. Owens" <puff -at- NETCOM -dot- COM>]

> I use FrontPage for my web sites, and I can attest to the fact that
> FrontPage does indeed add certain HTML tags that are a nuisance. I
> don't know if you can edit FrontPage HTML pages in other authoring
> programs,

     Only at grave risk to your sanity :-).

     Seriously, the big thing that 90% of the hardcore web crowd have
against WYSIWYG web editors is that a) by definition of what the web
is, they can't work and b) they almost always produce crappy HTML,
both in the structural sense and usually in the internal organization
sense.  In other words, when it comes time to crack it open - which it
almost always does, sooner or later, and it's usually the hardcore
HTML person that gets this dirty job - the code is obscenely messy and
complicated, unnecessarily so.

     And most such web editors have all sorts of stupid behaviors, in
addition, such as not being able to import code once you've cracked it
open to do some simple, straightforward modification, or not being
able to simply open a file and make a change, instead having to take a
cleanly formatted and well-designed file and make all sorts of
modifications.

     If I cared about WYSIWYG editors, it might be an interesting
experiment to take some medium-complex web page, cleanly implemented by
hand, open it and save it with each of the WYSIWYG editors and then crack
it open and look at how much distortion each one introduces.

     The best web editors are the ones that don't try to hide the HTML
entirely from the user, but simply try to make the experience less
painful for non-programmers.  HTML is not and was never designed to be
a static, visual layout language.

Steven J. Owens
puff -at- netcom -dot- com

 From ??? -at- ??? Sun Jan 00 00:00:00 0000=